EXHAUSTED, We dropped upon
the sandbar in the bottom of the Little Colorado River Canyon and gazed up at
the 2600 feet of beetling cliffs down which we had just lowered ourselves.
Nearby was one of the packs we had carried down--a folded rubber boat. With it
we hoped to effect the first navigation of the Little Colorado River.

Boat trips down many of
America's white-water rivers have become commonplace. Anyone can buy a ticket on
a ride down the Ausable or the Snake, and some of the thrill has gone from the
rapids of the Green and the Salmon, so routine has their navigation become. But,
happily there still remains a few frontiers for the river-runners, streams which
because of their violence or inaccessibility have not felt the bite of paddle or
oar. Such a course is the Little Colorado of Arizona which has run defiantly on
through the centuries, unprofaned and seldom visited by man--for good and
sumcient reasons.

The word "river" is a
misnomer for this extraordinary- drainage system. Through most of the year there
is not enough water in the Little Colorado to fill a canteen let alone float a
boat. But when cloudbursts strike the Painted Desert a surging, tearing,
redbrown flood boils down the canyon and the channel is transformed from a
ribbon of sand into a torrent of destruction. In April and May of some years
there is a more gentle, continuous flow from the melting snows of the White
Mountains.

While explorers and
surveyors have been conquering the rapids of western rivers for more than
three-quarters of a century, it remained for two venturesome young men in April,
1955, to navigate for the first time the turquoise water which flows from Blue
Springs in the chasm of the Little Colorado below Cameron, Arizona. Here is the
story of a difficult and hazardous expedition.

The Little Colorado is one
of the most forbidding canyons in the West. For the last 53 miles of its length
the river is a great jagged gash in the Arizona plateau, reaching an ultimate
depth of 3457 feet below its rim as it enters Grand Canyon. At many points along
this winding gorge, one can throw a rock into the stream-bed a half-mile below,
so sheer are the walls! Because of its cutting prowess, the river has achieved
complete privacy in its last miles. Even the Navajo families who herd sheep in
this vicinity stay wellback from the canyon edge, in superstitious fear of the
dark chasm. Ar in the depths, the river flows in mystery, inhabited by the
beaver and the otter and occasionally by a wild duck or egret.

In the early part of the
19th Century, Captain Sitgreaves of the Topographical Engineer Corps, receivedorders from Washington to "pursue the Little Colorado to
its junction with the Colorado . . . and pursue theColorado to its junction with the Gulf of California."
With nothing more to go on, Captain Sitgreaves set out from the Zuni pueblo in
New Mexico. When he reached the Little Colorado he followed it down stream for
some miles, possibly to the vicinity of what is now Cameron, Arizona, and then
abandoned the project as being too hazardous. This opinion has prevailed to this
day.

Here then was a stream to
challenge the river-man, a sinuous questiori-mark of a river laid across the map
of Northem Arizona. It was to accept this challenge that we were on that sandbar
one April afternoon last year.

The obvious beginning for a
boatride down the lower Little Colorado is at Cameron, where the only highway
bridge in a hundred miles crosses the canyon. Here the cliffs are low and the
stream-bed accessible -- but we found almost no water in the river at this
point. So we were forced to travel west from Cameron along the rim to where we
knew navigable water existed.

At Blue Springs subterranean
streams contribute over 200 cubic feet a second to the main channel. Waterwould be no problem here, but descending the 2600-foot
canyon wall was another matter.

My fellow explorer, Les
Womack, knew the location of an old Indian route that snaked down the cliffs tothe canyon floor at the Springs. As far as we knew this
was the only route down the south rim of the canyon. The year before, Les had
worked his way down to the bottom with the use of ropes and believed he could
find his way down again. With that much to go on, we laid our plans.

The boat? Obviously it must
fold into a back-pack, and must weigh as little as possible. We settled on aNavy.:four-man inflatable raft. Food? Again weight was
critical; we took as little as we dared, but enough to support us for a week.
Bedding? We decided to suffer the cold rather than burden ourselves with heavy
bedrolls. Incidentals? Cameras and film, a snake-bite kit and a coil of climbing
rope. And, most important of all, water to drink. Blue Springs emits sulphurous
water, of a lovely turquoise color but unfit to drink! So ours became possibly
the first river expedition in history to carry all its drinking water to the
river--five gallons--40 pounds of it and as it turned out we needed every drop.

AIR TRAGEDY

This map drawn by Norton
Allen shows the locale of the tragic air accident on June 30 when a United Air
Lines DC-7 ant a TWA Super Constellation collided in mid-air bringing death to
128 passengers and crew members. The DC-7 wreckage was found near the southern
end of Chuar Butte and the TWA plane struck a mile south at the base of Temple
Butte.

At last we completed the
accumulation of gear and food, and we drove to the canyon edge above Blue
Springs, 20 miles from the pavement over a rough wagon road. At sunset we looked
down the darkening chasm and took our first photographs, wondering privately if
the negatives would ever survive to reach the developing tanks. It is a wide
mysterious world out there on the Little Colorado rim, and a full moon and night
breeze only emphasized the loneliness. We heard not even a coyote all night
long.

Morning broke clear and we
busied ourselves with the packs. Always at the start of one of these trips comes
a procedure of selecting and rejecting supplies. Les and I debated and packed,
reconsidered and unpacked, for an hour. The load on which we finally agreed
weighed about 200 pounds, obviously too much to carry in one trip. This we had
expected for our boat and water supply alone weighed 100 pounds.

With half the load in our
bulging rucksacks and the other half in the car, we headed down over the rim at
8 :10 with only a pair of soaring ravens watching us.

This day and the next were
days of hard work, hardly pleasant to look back upon, but satisfying. The route
down the canyon wall to Blue Springs is the cruelest track a rubber boat ever
descended. The first thousand feet called for cliff-scrambling and rope work;
the next thousand was through a tangle of monoliths and boulders in a steep
ravine. We took almost all the first day to get to the bottom because we lost
the route many times on the upper cliffs and had to do much reconnoitering and
backtracking. If the Indians ever had a trail here its markings have long since
eroded away.

We had a mishap on the first
day which nearly ended our expedition before it began. Only 10 minutes after
starting, our 120-foot coil of five-eighths inch Manila climbing rope escaped
from hand while being passed down over a ledge, and took a running jump out into
space, rolling and bounding out of sight under the overhang far below! Les
looked at me and said "We've had it." I mournfully agreed.

We inched our way down to
look and hung our chins over a little 50 foot cliff, a sandstone stratum which
apparently ran sheer and overhanging out of sight both to right and left. Below
it was a short talus slope where our coil of rope must have come to rest. Up the
cliff behind us a narrow chimney cut through a shoulder of rock that obstructed
our view to that side. Les boosted me up into the chimney and from there I
climbed down over the shoulder and down the ledge on a precipitous but
well-formed natural ladder. I put my feet and hands to the steps of rock as had
the Indian discoverers of this route centuries before me, and was soon down to
the slope below. Nearby was the pesky coil of rope. Here we learned an
important lesson: never carry a tightly bound coil of rope. Keep it in large
loose coils that will catch and hold if dropped. This coil came to rest 400 feet
below its jumping off place--and only because the binder twine had broken and
the rope uncoiled. We had the line hung over a rappelling pin by 9:30, and let
down all of our load to the foot of the drop by 11:00. The rest of the descent
was without hazard.

Next day, after a night's
sleep in the canyon bottom, we made a round trip to the rim and back, bringing
down the boat, paddles and final supplies. The awkward package the folded boat
made gave us many uncomfortable moments on the cliffside. Much of the time we
could not wear the boat on our backs, but had to pass it from hand to hand down
the rocks. The combination of anxiety and heavy loads had us into near
exhaustion by the time we returned to the river-edge, but after a rest on the
beach and a wash in the cool water, we had energy enough to inflate the boat and
go for a trial spin on the calm pool of Blue Springs.

Once on the murky water, we
felt a mighty elation, but our delight was tempered by the rock-strewn, wave
tumbled river below the pool. What would we find around the bend? We had little
real information about the river. In many places it cannot be seen from the rims
and its channel has never been surveyed or mapped in this area. Would we find
waterfalls which the boat could not run and which we could not portage around?
The Indian hearsay and legend which we had heard indicated that this would be
the case--we could only hope that these tales were superstition. The famous
explorer Major Powell faced the same Indian warnings when he embarked on the
unknown Colorado in 1869, yet he got through. Surely this little tributary of
the Colorado could not stop us now--or could it? Too tired to speculate or worry
for long, we cooked supper over a driftwood fire and turned in.

Our two evenings in camp at
Blue Springs were delightful. We camped on a flat of cool sand, ringed on the
high sides by a polished blue limestone cliff and decorated on the river side by
a stand of pale green tamarisk. The gush of spring water and the squeak of bats
filled our ears all night long. On the second night, with a moon directly above
and the canyon walls towering dizzily in the pale half-light I was awakened by
the rustle of a paper bag. Raising my head to look, I stared full into the dark
eyes of a big ringtail cat who was investigating our provisions. After a long
exchange of gazes, he backed away a few steps, turned, and was gone like the
perfect creature of the night that he is.

On the long-anticipated
morning of Tuesday, April 24, we began the actual boat ride. Behind us was the
hard work, ahead the pleasure of the river and the stimulation of the unknown.
We packed and lashed our gear in the boat with great care, using plastic
waterproof bags for cameras, film and food which must not get wet. We paddled
around the pool for an hour, trimming ship and getting accustomed to the
handling of our rubber doughnut and finally, at 10:30, we turned the prow north
and west into the first rapid.

Almost immediately we were
delighted with the performance of the craft. It became a living part of the
current, adjusting its very shape to the contours of the rapids and squeezing
through narrow rock passages with ease. In the beginning we were very nervous
about bumping or scraping the hull, but we soon learned that the rubber is
tougher than elephant hide and will stand the most outrageous punishment.

At the last and largest of
the Blue Springs outlets, a half mile below the Upper pool, we stopped for a
swim. There here issues from a cavern five or six feet below river level, making
a clear, inviting pool of ever circulating 69-degree F. water. We took more
pictures, the sun illuminating the contrast of clean blue spring water entering
the main current of red silt.

At noon we reluctantly
embarked, knowing we had to make many miles before dark. We traversed the
Redwall gorge on this first day. Here the cliffs of limestone grew ever higher
above our heads as we descended. In places there were undercuts three and four
hundred feet high, shutting from view all of the
upper walls of the canyon rising to the rim three thousand feet above. Even at
midday there is a cool quiet shadow under some of these overhangs which swallows
circle for food, their sharp calls echoing from the cliff. We stopped at one
such place for lunch.

That afternoon our
boat-work, which had been entirely comfortable all morning, began to offer a
problem. We came by degrees into a stretch of river where the current was
intersected by little barrier dams of lime and moss over which only two or three
inches of water ran in a long riffle. Such impediments forced us to unload the
boat and either drag or lift it across the riffle--only to find another such
obstacle a quarter of a mile downstream. By the time we quit for the day we had
crossed a dozen such dams, each one larger than the last. We estimated the
waterfalls over several of these to be seven or eight feet in vertical height
--not exactly navigable water!

We camped that night under a
prodigious overhang of the Redwall, built a huge fire to dry our gear, and went
to sleep wondering how many dams and waterfalls would challenge us the next day.

Happily, the second day on
the river went much better in point of mileage made. We were off to an early
start and by 10 a.m. were through the worst of the dams and into a somewhat
broader, more easily run river. At noon we came to the midpoint of our passage,
the junction with Salt Trail Canyon coming in from the north. Here we examined
the banks for some evidence of the old Indian trail to the historic salt mine up
canyon. But we found no sign of human passage, indicating that the occasional
floods 50 and 60 feet above normal river level had wiped out the ancient trails.

Along the shores were many
trails of other inhabitants, however. The tracks of deer, coyote, beaver, otter
and ringtail were everywhere. We looked for the prints of mountain sheep, but
found none. Kingfishers were common, pointing to the presence of fish invisible
in the clouded water. Occasionally a silvery minnow jumped clear of the surface
and we also found a catfish head on a rock in midstream probably abandoned there
by an otter. A solitary and very nervous merganser rose several times ahead of
us as wedrifted down to him.

By midafternoon we sighted
Cape Solitude, the mighty promontory under which the two Colorados flow
together. To our distress, the sun was screened behind a brassy overcast,
discouraging the taking of pictures in this place never before photographed.
Hurrying now, we plunged through the last two miles of continuous rapids and
arrived at the great portal where the rivers join at 5 p.m.

We accomplished what we had
set out to do--the first navigation of the lower Little Colorado. We passed from
the mysterious cleft of the Little Colorado into the historic confines of the
Grand Canyon, whose rapids are being traversed each year by increasing numbers
of boat parties. Our pathfinding cruise down the tributary was behind us--now we
were into the world's most dangerous river, in one of the smallest boats ever to
venture on the stream in these parts. If we were in any mood of
self-congratulation over the feat just accomplished, it was dissipated by the
ominous rolling power of the Colorado. We had to travel 10 miles down this
torrent to a trail back up the canyon walls to the rim and civilization.

We portaged the first rapid.
It was a noisy and awe-inspiring monster compared to the riffles of the
tributary we had just left. Then down the great channel and eddy below the rapid
we paddled with much care and some trepidation--the grease-colored boils and
whirlpools of the current commanded as much respect as a whitewater rapid to our
unaccustomed eyes. Our little boat seemed small indeed and our paddles puny
against the force of the flood. It was growing dark and cold and the clouds
gathering in the trees on the North Rim were threatening rain. After portaging
one more rapid, we made camp in a sheltering ledge. There we ate a sumptuous
supper-- a canned ham which we had been saving for a celebration banquet.

It rained most of the night,
in the trifling, grudging way of inner-canyon rains, but we slept dry under the
ledge. In the morning the storm broke away and we could see sparkling new snow
under the firs on Cape Royal, a vertical mile above camp. As we started
downstream on our final leg, we remarked how much smaller and less terrifying
the river had become since the evening before--so much will good food, sleep and
a bright morning do for a man's courage!

Although we portaged one
more rapid and lined the boat through two others, we decided that we could have
run all of the fast water of this stretch if we had wanted to be entirely
sporting. But we were carrying a wealth of irreplaceable film and discretion,
not valor, was our watchword. Nonetheless, we did have many a lively ride down
long slopes of swift water, with the savage crests of the rapid's tongue roaring
loud a few feet to one side or the other. We found that the shallow draft and
maneuverability of the little boat were real advantages in sneaking past the
edges of the worst rapids. Frequently we made use of tiny rivulets between the
rocks of a side channel, leaving the heavy current to snarl in frustration out
in midstream. In a matter of five hours' running we made eight miles down
river--and wished we could have gone another 80, so pleasant were the sky and
clouds and breeze and river.

We rounded a last bend and
recognized the beach at the foot of Tanner Trail, where we were to leave the
river and climb to Desert View in Grand Canyon National Park. It was 3: 30 pm
when we hauled the boat from the water for the last time and squeezed out the
cargo of air.

Next day we struggled up the
15 miles of Tanner Trail with our burdens of boat and supplies, staggered over
the rim at sunset and found a flat tire on the car which had been left for us at
trailhead!

Thus in the humiliation of
changing a tire our expedition came to an end. But we had conquered the Little
Colorado. We had solved the mystery of its deepest canyon and had brought back a
photographic record of its previously unphotographed walls and waterfalls. Our
report of the trip to the National Park Service has shed light on a formerly
unexplored corner of the Canyon Country.

The Bureau of Reclamation
proposes someday to develop the water resources of the Little Colorado Canyon,
so that eventually there may be a gigantic dam across our lonely chasm, and a
lake may invade our pleasant campsite at Blue Springs. We sincerely hope this
never comes to pass for the canyon of the Little Colorado is second to none in
spectacular beauty, and we feel it should be incorporated into the protective
custody of the National Park Service along with its big brother, the Grand
Canyon. Here is a section of our vanishing frontier that should be preserved in
its entirety--a wild, rugged, wilderness area to remain free from
commercialization for all time.